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Topic: when is the best time to add honey? (Read 2915 times)

i'm rushing to brew two beers in a short amount of time (the first one i did yesterday). i've switched to all grain, but i'm doing these extracts so i can have shorter brew days due to the fact that my wife could go into labor any day.....

i'm wanting to do an ipa brewed with honey. i have 48oz. of fresh local honey and i'll be brewing this weekend. is there a best time to add it in order to get some of the honey taste in the flavor profile a'la hopslam? i'll be using safale-05 as my yeast since i don't have enough time to make a starter with liquid yeast.

Common wisdom I've always heard is to add it after the vigorous part of fermentation is complete. Idea being that the crazy part of fermentation will blow off a lot of your honey character. That said, someone on here, I forget who, says they have good luck adding just after flameout.

Common wisdom I've always heard is to add it after the vigorous part of fermentation is complete. Idea being that the crazy part of fermentation will blow off a lot of your honey character. That said, someone on here, I forget who, says they have good luck adding just after flameout.

I have had the best luck adding during high krausen but I have also added during whirlpool with good effect. In an IPA not sure it would matter much as the flavor will be only be a hint in the background. So i would just add in the whirlpool for ease. An aside, don't know the gravity of your IPA but wouldn't make honey more than 20% of grist as you start to get mead-like alcohol flavor above this IMO.